


comradeship.

by sketchy_and_unformed



Category: Naruto
Genre: Affection Fest, Anbu Hatake Kakashi, Anbu Yamato | Tenzou, Comrades in Arms, Friendship, Gen, Gen Fluff, Root Tenzo, Tenzō's Cabin, happy feels, no beta we die like shinobi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:20:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29286702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sketchy_and_unformed/pseuds/sketchy_and_unformed
Summary: He missed Raidō sometimes, and Genma. There were plenty of other soldiers to fill their places, no gaps left in the ranks, but, Tenzō realised, the way that he missed them had little to do with their skills as shinobi.Strange, he mused, that he should have formed social attachments to men who were, after all, only fellow soldiers.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Yamato | Tenzou, Namiashi Raidou & Yamato | Tenzou
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30
Collections: Tenzo's Cabin Affection Fest





	comradeship.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Tenzou's Cabin](https://discord.gg/6kEsrB22DQ) Affection Fest event!
> 
> The 3 characters I was given to choose from were Raidou, Aoba and Hinata (sorry, Hinata XD). I chose the theme of Friendship for this piece. A very cute idea that came to me. I hope you enjoy it :)
> 
> ~~Kakashi also wormed his way in and I couldn't keep him out~~

Tenzō never had friends in Root and that was okay.

Root soldiers did as they were ordered and as was considered essential to their survival. Tenzō’s routine fit around the missions and although the next mission could come at any time and last for any number of days, the specifics of his routine never changed. Outside of missions he ate, slept, bathed and trained, as did every other Root soldier. Life was orderly and simple and Tenzō didn’t feel sad to have no friends (he didn’t feel much of anything; he was not permitted such a luxury). After all, what would there have been to speak about to a friend? The routine was the same for all of them and discussing any of its activities would have been utterly meritless.

In Root, socialising was not necessary. It was, in fact, viewed as detrimental. What was important was the mission and to take care of one’s health so that one could complete the mission. Anything else was only a distraction at best or a vulnerability, a weakness, at worst.

Tenzō grew up with silence for company and with the dull comfort of his routines for entertainment. It wasn’t bad. He didn’t really have metrics for understanding good and bad during those days, but even as an adult when he knew more about the outside world he didn’t think it had been bad.

Tenzō transferred from Root to ANBU at age fourteen. He was told afterwards by his captain Kakashi that walking into the ANBU locker room that first day had taken a lot of courage. Tenzō didn’t understand why that would be true. ANBU was his assignment and he was reporting for duty; it had been the simplest thing in the world to arrive at the locker room he had been assigned at the hour at which he had been ordered to do so. When he said as much to Kakashi, his captain’s silver eyebrows had crept upwards in an expression Tenzō couldn’t quite fathom, then he had knuckled roughly at the top of Tenzō’s head while muttering something about zombies that Tenzō equally did not understand.

Tenzō didn’t understand a lot of things in those early days of ANBU. So much was new, strange and confusing to him, but mostly the not understanding was okay, too. He was well used to missions and he knew how to maintain his routine of sleeping, eating and toileting and they were the only things that he needed to do in order to fulfil his duties. Everything else, including friendship, was optional.

Kakashi wasn’t Tenzō’s friend and that was okay. He was an excellent captain and he looked out for Tenzō as much as he looked out for any of his kōhai. He fidgeted when Tenzō called him senpai and rolled his eyes when Tenzō called him captain which he found very strange considering that Kakashi plainly was both of those things, but Tenzō was fast discovering that all people were strange to varying degrees.

Like Mitarashi Anko, who called Tenzō ‘brat’ and begged to braid his long hair until finally he gave in when her constant whining became too irritating to ignore. 

Or like Shiranui Genma and Yamashiro Aoba who poked at Tenzō’s arms in the locker room and called him a ‘skinny sapling’ and tossed mochi at him from across the cafeteria while screaming that he needed to grow big and strong like an oak tree.

(He ate the mochi that he caught. They were delicious.)

His teammates weren’t his friends but Tenzō didn’t mind that, had never expected anything else. He was happy just to have teammates at all, others whom he could work with and depend upon and be depended upon in turn. He knew that life already and it suited him well. ANBU wasn’t always so different from Root. The missions were the same, the basics of the survival routines were the same. It was outside of those things that Tenzō found  _ other _ and  _ more _ .

Personalities existed in ANBU––like the slightly feral Mitarashi-san and the boisterous Yamashiro-san––where in Root there were only the masks and the codenames. ANBU soldiers were unique and they appreciated Tenzō’s uniqueness, confronting him with it for the first time in his life.

He had always known that he was the sole mokuton user––as far as anybody was aware––since the Shodaime. He had always known, too, that the ability had been implanted and that he had lived where fifty nine others (and several adult shinobi in the years before) had died. He’d known that his  _ jutsu _ was unique but had been conditioned to believe that he himself was only a tool to be used for a purpose, the means by which his jutsu might be wielded, a jutsu that existed to serve Konoha.

Tenzō didn’t have friends in ANBU but he was irreplaceable. He had a role, a niche, and was led to understand for the first time how valuable his jutsu could be not only to the abstract idea of Konoha but to its people.

“Team Ro would be lost without you, Tenzō,” Kakashi said to him once when his wood clones had uncovered crucial intelligence without any of their team being detected by the enemy.

“Thank goodness for you, Tenzō!” Aoba said when he built a wooden shelter in seconds during a powerful rain storm.

ANBU soldiers marvelled at Tenzō’s mokuton, clamouring for him to create things that served no practical purpose and cheering at the results when he did so. His creations were clumsy at first but with the coaxing of his teammates they got better. Tenzō gained more control over his mokuton and more finesse in creation and he was pleased. Where in Root he had only used his jutsu as a weapon or as a shield, in ANBU he learned to use it firstly for other practical purposes––shelters, ladders, structural supports––and later to craft things of utter frivolity like children’s building block toys, jewellery beads, tiny carved statues of animals that could sit on the palm of his hand. At first the whole thing was very strange to Tenzō but he was always eager to be an asset and he learned that one could be useful outside of the mission as well as within.

He provided entertainment, a thing that had been disdained in Root but was cherished in ANBU, and it felt good to do so. The delight of his fellow soldiers was cheering, their laughter like a balm that washed away the worst of the mission aftermath as effectively as soap washed the blood from his skin.

For every year that he aged, Tenzō worked a little harder to fit in. He had always been thirsty for knowledge and soaked up information like a sponge until he was more comfortable navigating the loud cafeteria at mealtimes and sharing conversation with his teammates during idle hours. He understood that a social contract existed and that as a member of the social body he was duty bound to fulfil his end of it, and duty was familiar to him.

So Tenzō let Anko coo over his long hair and braid flowers into it. He ate lunch with Genma and Aoba so they didn’t have to toss desserts across the room to him.

It was comradeship, at least. It was pleasant.

Teasing, Tenzō learned, could be a sign of respect, so he learned how to tease. One day when Namiashi Raidō called him a twig, he called him an overgrown weed in return. There was a brief, stunned silence followed by loud peals of laughter from everyone who had heard and Tenzō flushed with pride that he’d caused such a joyous reaction. Raidō wiped a tear from his eye, grinned broadly and told Tenzō that he had officially joined the gang now.

“Gang?” Tenzō blinked. “We don’t beat people up for their money, do we?”

Everyone laughed again.

It was Namiashi Raidō who helped Tenzō the first time that his jutsu went badly wrong and left him with both arms full of splinters. He had been training in a nearby ground and heard Tenzō cry out in surprise and pain. After immediately flickering to his side he assessed the damage calmly and then worked with steady, careful hands to remove every sharp sliver of wood.

“It was my fault,” Tenzō explained. “I was trying to combine both of my chakra natures with shape control, like Kakashi-senpai does with his Chidori. It was a dumb idea.”

Raidō smiled as he wound bandages. “It was a smart idea badly executed. Don’t be afraid to keep trying. Maybe study a little more first.”

As he dabbed the last of the antiseptic, he asked Tenzō whether he remembered a time before he’d had the mokuton. Tenzō shook his head.

“I don’t remember anything before the test tube. The whole world was green and underwater, and then Lord Danzo set me free. That’s the first thing I remember.”

Raidō nodded and tied off the last bandage. “It’s a big responsibility for such a little twig, you know. A jutsu like that.”

Tenzō shrugged. “It’s just my jutsu.”

“Well, not everyone believes that it should be yours. I hope you’ll be careful out there.”

“I’m always careful,” Tenzō said solemnly. “And if anything goes wrong, I have the gang to help.”

Raidō grinned brightly. “That you do, little twig.”

Tenzō hesitated for a moment, tugging idly at the end of a bandage, then he asked Raidō a question.

“When did you get your scar?”

It was the first time Tenzō had ever made a real attempt to learn more about somebody. It made him uncomfortable to ask it, but he understood by then––through books he’d read and through first hand observation––that asking questions was how one initiated conversation and that conversation was generally expected when one was around others. He also understood that Raidō had asked him a somewhat personal question first and was doing his best to reciprocate.

Raidō’s hand went unconsciously to the left side of his face as his grin faded. “I was five,” he said. “I don’t really remember what happened or much from before that day. It hurt like hell, I know that much.”

“Does it bother you?” Tenzō asked. “I mean, do you ever wish...you didn’t have it?”

“I used to, sometimes,” Raidō said, still touching the scar. “Kids used to stare or call me names. But now...” he paused and flashed Tenzō a crooked smile, “it’s just my scar, you know? It belongs to me the same way the mokuton belongs to you.”

“We have something in common, then,” Tenzō said. He smiled what he hoped was a sincere smile, not wanting to offend his comrade.

Raidō laughed. “A skinny little twig and an overgrown weed, huh?”

When Tenzō had been in ANBU for exactly one year, he got up in the morning to find three enormous bunches of flowers outside his bedroom door. In his locker, he found a bonsai tree in a terracotta pot. When he walked into the cafeteria for lunch he was met with a shower of leaves and petals and a chorus of ‘Happy Anniversary, Tenzō!’

His comrades thumped him on the back and several presented him with gifts: a set of shuriken, a shaving kit (“just in case you ever actually grow any facial hair,” Aoba chuckled) and several dog-eared paperbacks (most of which were definitely not age appropriate).

In the very centre of the room with his arms folded over his chest was a grinning Namiashi Raidō.

“We had a pool going at first,” he confessed, bumping Tenzō with one elbow as they ate lunch side by side. “I thought you’d defect within a month.”

“I thought you’d be dead,” Anko chipped in from across the table.

“Or crazy,” Aoba added around a mouthful of salmon.

“But anyway,” Raidō continued, smiling down at Tenzō in a way that was almost fraternal (not that Tenzō would have recognised the sentiment), “we’re all glad you’re still here, Tenzō.”

Tenzō smiled down at his lunch. “Thank you, Raidō-senpai.”

“Always with the senpai,” Raidō grumbled, bumping Tenzō again so hard that his arm jerked into his food and shot rice across the table. “Makes a man feel old.”

Anko snorted. “He’s still just a widdle baby, Rai. He can’t help it.”

“Senpai,” Aoba mocked in a high, childish voice. Then his face softened. “It’s sort of nice, to be honest. At least someone here respects us.”

“Not you,” Anko replied. “Even Tenzō doesn’t respect you.”

“I do respect Aoba-senpai,” Tenzō said quietly, blushing.

Anko snickered. “You’re too sweet, Tenz. Trust me, he’s not worth it.”

“Shut your mouth, Anko-chan,” Aoba muttered and Anko shrieked.

“What did you just call me?”

The bickering descended into an all out brawl between the two of them when Anko slammed Aoba down onto the tabletop and rubbed food into his hair. Soon others were pelting the two of them with food and Raidō snatched Tenzō out of his chair and held him over his head while yelling “Protect the tree! Protect the tree!”

It was chaotic and ridiculous and Tenzō couldn’t stop laughing.

Over the years, one by one, his comrades drifted out of the ranks. Raidō was one of the first to leave, being a little older. He was pulled for Hokage guard duty––and followed there by Genma six months later––when Tenzō was in his third year of ANBU and about to turn seventeen (or perhaps already had; he didn’t know his actual birthday). Ranks were shuffled and Aoba and Anko joined Team Ro alongside Tenzō and Kakashi for a time. It was certainly a much more lively team with the two of them around and soon Kakashi insisted on separate shelters on the nights that the four of them had to camp out during missions, always opting to share his shelter with Tenzō.

Mission nights with Kakashi were enjoyable; his captain was quiet in contrast to many of Tenzō’s other ANBU comrades but he did converse with Tenzō often, his voice soft in the hush of their wooden shelters. Little by little he let his whole story out and Tenzō learned about the proud, stubborn boy that Kakashi had been and the origin of his most famous nicknames along with his Sharingan. It was nice, Tenzō thought, that his senpai trusted him with the information. He wasn’t sure that he fully understood why Kakashi chose to tell him those things, but it was nice all the same.

Little by little, Tenzō was fitting in. He started to truly understand all of the unspoken social contracts that filled the world outside of Root and not only because he’d read them in books. By eighteen he felt confident navigating the wider world. He went undercover during missions without breaking a sweat, knowing how to blend in without needing to practise his smiles in front of the mirror first. He felt like, as Raidō would have put it, ‘one of the gang’.

He missed Raidō sometimes, and Genma. There were plenty of other soldiers to fill their places, no gaps left in the ranks, but, Tenzō realised, the way that he missed them had little to do with their skills as shinobi.

Strange, he mused, that he should have formed social attachments to men who were, after all, only fellow soldiers.

Aoba left ANBU when Tenzō was nineteen and lunches in the cafeteria were considerably quieter affairs after that. The Hyuuga who was drafted in to fill his strategic position was fine at his job, probably better than Aoba had been. But, Tenzō thought with a pang of resentment that startled him, he wasn’t Aoba.

ANBU members were only permitted to socialise amongst themselves. Former members were forbidden to contact those that still remained, in the interests of national security. ANBU operated as a tightly sealed unit, supposedly impenetrable from the outside. It chafed against some of their membership, Tenzō could tell. Anko, in particular, fumed about it often.

“As if they expect us to believe that nobody knows who we are already,” she huffed to Tenzō whenever she could grab him and bend his ear over a bottle of sake smuggled in from the village store. “Kakashi is in every bingo book from here to Kumo. What good does it do, locking us away like this?”

Secret membership or not, Tenzō always found flowers outside his bedroom on his anniversary. He often found mochi and dango there, too, when he returned from long and exhausting missions, and he didn’t think the items had come from Kakashi or Anko.

Tenzō wasn’t very surprised when Anko left the ranks less than a year after Aoba.

Kakashi leaving was a little more of a surprise, but Tenzō was glad for him.

“You’ve served your time, senpai,” he said as he helped Kakashi pack up his locker. “I’m sure it’ll be nice to get out of here.”

“Always the optimist,” Kakashi said, smiling fondly.

“Has the Hokage decided on a replacement captain?”

“Hmm, there is one name that comes up often,” Kakashi mused with a hand to his chin. “A very fine shinobi, loyal and highly skilled. Very well liked. A real team player.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Tenzō said, bumping his now former captain with his shoulder, their bare skin colliding. “Who is this bright star of the ANBU?”

Kakashi dropped a heavy hand onto Tenzō’s head, ruffling his cropped hair. “It’s you, Tenzō. The job is yours, if you would like it.”

Tenzō fumbled, dropped one of the kunai he was holding. “Me? A captain?”

“Your performance speaks for itself,” Kakashi said, sounding proud. “You’ve more than earned the promotion.”

Tenzō considered it, turning the idea over in his mind as he did the same with the weapon in his hands. Captain of Team Ro. Stepping into Kakashi-senpai’s shoes.

“I don’t know if I can lead,” he confessed. He was comfortable admitting such doubts to Kakashi, who had always confided in Tenzō in turn, always supported him and never judged him. The trust between them, Tenzō understood, ran deeper than faith in each other’s abilities as shinobi.

“Tenzō,” Kakashi said, moving the hand to his shoulder and shaking him lightly. “You already are a leader. Maybe it wasn’t official but you’ve been my deputy in Team Ro for years. The others trust you. They  _ like _ you. They’ll follow you without question.”

Tenzō blushed. “Do you really think so?”

“If you don’t want the job, you don’t have to take it,” Kakashi said. “But I believe that it should be you and the Hokage supports me in that. Again, it’s yours if you want it.”

Tenzō had long known that he was trusted in the way that all ANBU trusted all other ANBU implicitly, as a matter of course and necessity.

But to be respected enough to lead a team.

To be  _ liked _ .

“If you have faith in me, senpai, then I will accept,” Tenzō said quietly, still blushing fiercely at the very idea.

“I’m glad, Tenzō,” Kakashi said, still holding him around the shoulders. “And one day I’ll see you out there in the village as well. I don’t want you staying in ANBU forever, you hear me?”

“I will do what’s best for Konoha, senpai,” Tenzō said automatically and Kakashi sighed and dropped his arm.

“You always have, Tenzō. But please do what’s best for yourself as well.”

“I…” Tenzō wasn’t sure how to react. Himself had never been important, had never been a consideration. “I will try, senpai.”

Kakashi smiled. “Good. Eat your vegetables. I’ll see you.”

It hurt, Tenzō realised, to see him go.

It had hurt with all of them––Raidō, Genma, Aoba, Anko.

How peculiar, Tenzō thought, to feel such an emotion over mere colleagues.

Tenzō was twenty six when the Godaime pulled him out of ANBU, more than a decade away from Root and the better part of his whole life spent behind a blank white mask. To be pulled away from that was a little terrifying so he made it into another mission: to play the role of Yamato-taicho. He’d never met Sakura, Naruto or Sai before, after all. They didn’t know Tenzō.

Kakashi, though, certainly did know Tenzō.

“Ah. So you’re the Yamato that the Hokage was talking about,” he said with a warm twinkle in his dark eye that sent a corresponding flicker of warmth through Tenzō in return. He knew well enough by now to recognise it for what it was. He was glad to see Kakashi again, glad to see somebody that he knew. There was a deep comfort in such familiarity for him now as much as for anybody else.

Times were hard, fraught with a mounting tension that had necessitated Tenzō’s release from his captain’s role, but they were not so hard that Kakashi wasn’t able to find an excuse to walk him home from the training grounds one evening.

His absence from ANBU was ostensibly temporary, but the way that Kakashi spoke gave Tenzō serious reason to doubt that he would ever return. He welcomed the thought, as impossible as it would have seemed a year, a month, even a week before. The routines were still as familiar as his own shadow, but he was less afraid than he had ever been before by the possibilities of  _ other _ and  _ more _ .

“Who do you have in Team Ro now?” Kakashi asked as they strolled through the village side by side with the setting sun behind them painting the sky pink and orange. “Anybody of note?”

“Officially, I couldn’t possibly say,” Tenzō said, stoic until Kakashi bumped him with his shoulder and the façade cracked. “But unofficially, there’s a Nara girl with a great jutsu. Shadow needles. She’s only sixteen but her accuracy is outstanding.”

“Hmm. Is she deputising while you’re away?”

Tenzō nodded. “She’s young but I think she can handle it.”

He belatedly realised that they’d turned down the wrong street entirely if his apartment was their intended destination and he paused.

“Senpai––”

The next thing that Tenzō knew, what seemed like the contents of an entire flower shop had been unceremoniously dumped over him from a balcony above. A thick shower of white, yellow and pink petals blocked out the world until they settled in drifts around his feet. 

Kakashi had deftly sidestepped out of the line of fire and stood laughing as Tenzō shook his head and sent petals flying from his short hair.

“Tenzōoooo!”

Mitarashi Anko leapt from the balcony and landed on his back, her arms around his neck.

“It’s great to see you, buddy!”

That came from Yamashiro Aoba who emerged from the shadows of a shop doorway, grinning from ear to ear.

“We’ve been waiting for years to take you out for a drink. So what do you say?”

Tenzō turned, beaming, at the sound of Shiranui Genma’s voice from behind him. When he saw Namiashi Raidō by his side, arms folded across his chest in a familiar pose, his smile stretched even wider.

“If it isn’t my favourite weed,” Tenzō said. “I suppose the petals were your idea?”

Raidō raised his eyes to the sky in a mockery of innocence. “I don’t know why you’d think that.”

Anko leapt lightly to the ground and linked her arm through Tenzō’s. “Not such a skinny twig anymore, is he? Tenzō, you grew up  _ delicious _ .”

Aoba quickly stepped over and put his arm possessively around Anko’s waist. “Easy, tiger. You’re spoken for.”

“You never let me have any fun,” Anko pouted.

“Well, Tenzō?” Raidō said. “Fancy a drink with your friends?”

“Only if you’re buying,” Tenzō said, smiling so hard that his cheeks hurt. “It’s good to see you all again.”

Yes. Friends. That was the right word after all. It had always been.


End file.
